Warthogs and Other Beauties

The US defence department has rediscovered the advantages of the right to silence, in connection with the detrimentation by two of its pilots of a British serviceman who was standing shoulder to shoulder with them in March 2003. The Americans have refused to provide the pilots' training records, copies of their flight logs, permission to take statements from witnesses, the full report of the US investigation into the incident, or the rules of engagement by which American forces operate in Iraq.

There are, of course, any number of perfectly plausible and legitimate reasons for such a refusal. One might be that the US rules of engagement specify that pilots in Iraq are to shoot at anything and everything, without first checking whether they could be breaking a poodle's toys. Another might be that US defence officials suffer from a cultural blind spot concerning British courts' occasional reliance on evidence. In any case, it is reassuring to see that the Vicar of Downing Street, the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office all take the matter so seriously that the constitutional affairs minister - whose political prestige is probably somewhere between that of the Department of Cultchah-Meedjah-'n'-How-You-Play-The-Game and Geoff Hoon's Ministry of Atlanticism-as-applied-to-Europe - was the one cranked out to "condemn" the Americans' attitude. She found it not so much culpable and irresponsible as "regrettable and disappointing", like a wet day at Wimbledon; it seems eminently possible, in the face of this onslaught, that the terms of the Special Relationship will remain as much to our advantage as ever.